Morning Links: Aaron Judge Beer Foam Portrait Edition

For ARTnews, Barbara Pollack took in the scene at the start of Art Basel Hong Kong—”a fair that has matured into an art-market powerhouse.” [ARTnews]

A New York Times story from Art Basel Hong Kong marvels at the money there. “A report released last year revealed that, for the first time, there are now more billionaires in Asia than in the United States,” Amy Qin writes. But there are “signs this year of a backlash among some local dealers who are concerned that while the pie may be bigger, not everyone is getting a chance to partake.” [The New York Times]

For CNN Style, LACMA director Michael Govan wrote an essay pondering inclinations toward pleasure or politics in art. “The art world is far from consensus on the relationship between art and politics. Indeed, the lineup of artists discussing this very topic at an Intelligence Squared event in Hong Kong this week exemplifies the diversity of opinions on how—or even whether—the two should interact.” [CNN Style]

California

Hans Haacke’s News, first conceived in 1969, is up and running and printing out spools of online news that visitors to SFMOMA can pick up and peruse. For the Paris Review, Sophie Haigney went to check it out: “One afternoon, I watched News for two hours straight. . . . I wanted to know: What is the point of News in 2018?” [The Paris Review]

In Los Angeles, Frederick Fisher is an unusual specimen: an architect whose work precedes his reputation. “His houses, academic buildings, and spaces for making and showing art are all about substance rather than show,” the L.A. Times writes. [Los Angeles Times]

Eat/Drink

Evidently images can now be printed on beer foam. But, a hitch: “Major League Baseball warned the New York Yankees on Tuesday that a plan to display images of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and other players imprinted in beer sold at Yankee Stadium violated league policy.” [ESPN]

A man named Angelis Nannos gives food tours of various sites in New York, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He talks about food in paintings and artworks of other kinds—including a very pretty porcelain oyster plate! [NPR]

Artwork

As embodied in a new book and installation in “Being: New Photography 2018” at MoMA, the artist Carmen Winant has collected a vast store of images related to a desire to “make childbirth radically visible.” As she writes near the end of her book, “I am no closer to understanding who takes possession of this process, or locating the words to make it known.” [The New Yorker]

An exhibition in Paris has made some reconsider the history of the Qajar dynasty in Iran—and more. “Just as the exhibition doesn’t limit itself to narrow interpretations of Iranian art, it also goes beyond the Qajars to serve as a sort of introduction to the richness and exuberance of Iranian art and culture as a whole, as well as a catalyst for intercultural dialogue.” [BBC Culture]

New paintings by Tony Larson in a gallery show in Los Angeles “are so fun to see that you may not notice how smart they are,” says the L.A. Times. “And that’s just fine with Larson, whose geometric abstractions on canvas, drop cloth and metal are nothing if not comfortable in their own skin.” [Los Angeles Times]

Tunes

NPR Music has a long and exacting essay on Keiji Haino, a singular musician and enigmatic “dark wizard of the avant-garde” from Japan. [NPR Music]

Ursula K. Le Guin, the beloved science-fiction writer who died in January, made an album of “deeply weird and enjoyable” electronic music in the ’80s to accompany her novel Always Coming Home. [The Guardian]